»I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...«

The Kunstverein in Hamburg has invited Venice Biennale German Pavilion artist Tino Sehgal for a very generously-budgeted untitled solo show "dealing with the theme of progress."[1] A wonderful gift to the Kunstverein public, for whom it will be a holiday season fostering much reflection and discussion. Tino Sehgal has found a way of working which is really different. Of a work of his being currently shown at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, he says: "It has nothing to do with the model of production on which our civilization is based."[2] Incredible as his claim may seem, Tino Sehgal produces "products" which are "completely immaterial."[3] Is the Holy Ghost gracing the Kunstverein with His presence? Or are artists, once again, able to harness the science of the world beyond nature, metaphysics? At the risk of dampening viewers' surprise, a brief clarification is perhaps in order. Sehgal uses the term 'immaterial' in the sense that, for example, former U.S Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, Antonio Negri, or Newt Gingrich do (although many serious economists usually bracket the term in quotation marks): 'immaterial' labor simply is the production of knowledge, cultural artifacts, services, or communication. So, no marvels of transubstantiation at the Kunstverein; the link to a certain religious tradition, and the novelty of Sehgal's approach within the art context, however, are matters further addressed below.

A contextual work

Visitors at the Kunstverein are treated to a sort of audience-participation theater/choreography piece, in which they are addressed by various strangers who lead them through (and briefly outside of) the building while engaging them in conversation. There is apparently a large team of people on stand-by, so each visitor or small group can set forth without delay, seven hours a day, six days a week, without prior reservation. In apparent homage to the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol, Sehgal has thoughtfully arranged the conversation partners according to age. But true to an art-in-the -everyday tradition of Happenings and performance works that he is also obviously versed in, the conversation partners have nothing outwardly extraordinary about them. Instead of a Ghost of Christmas Past, Ghost of Christmas Present, and Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, I met a girl about 12, a young woman, a man in his late twenties to early thirties, and a fellow in his sixties. As in the Dickens classic, one figure appears after the other disappears or turns away. Here, Seghal uses the architectonic potential of the Kunstverein space, setting partition walls slightly apart from each other to create corridors, even using spaces not usually open to the public. In an approach consistent with the economy of minimalism (and unlike the 1960's Happenings of Kaprow, Whitman etc.) no special backdrops, curtains, or props are used. The choreography of the strangers complements the aforementioned surprises with verve. Ecumenical topics were addressed in a friendly, jovial way, yet philosophical, even life-changing, implications were not foreclosed. At several moments, the strangers asked me questions about my past and background, thereby integrating my biography into the work. Things started off with a subtle play of words and actions, the pondering of the word "Fort-schritt" (in German, both "Progress" and "step forward") while physically moving forth into the first empty space. The free and easy deambulation through space untrammeled by the clutter of objects, the exquisite blank walls, the balance between coziness and expanse, the autonomy of the approach...why not say it?—celebrate it: a Surprising White Christmas, in store for everyone, despite the mild weather. The contextual aspect of the work does not stop short at the architectonic and seasonal dimensions, however.[4] Tino Sehgal's exhibition is pleasantly calibrated to the needs of those who have weathered the Fall/Winter hectic of the Berlin, Frieze, FIAC, Cologne, and Art Basel Miami fairs, not to mention the Kunstverein's own "Editions 2006" show. Visitors are relieved to be able to rest their eyes a bit, and to NOT talk about art at what is, nonetheless, a place to be. One may reflect on this knack young successful artists have to be so in tune with the dispositions of their benefactors and patrons. I first heard of Tino Sehgal when Hamburg gallerist and Kunstverein board member Jürgen Vorrath described him as "one of the best political artists."[5] Sehgal, trained as a political economist, and Vorrath both share the view that markets are "democratic."[6] Like Vorrath, he puts first things first with regard to his involvement with art. Vorrath: "For me, an artist that I am involved with is an entrepreneur with whom I undertake a business relationship. Whether he's an artist or not, that's something my tax-advisor can decide, as far as I'm concerned."[7] What music to Vorrath's ears (and, with prices ranging from €8,000 to 40,000 [8], for like-minded gallerists) when Sehgal states, matter-of-factly, "My work produces income, but I am not dependent on material things."[9] Sehgal's theme for this exhibition, "progress," is also in keeping with the preoccupations of Kunstverein Director Yilmaz Dziewior. The exhibition immediately preceding the current one was none other than a showcase of "new works from young artists [...] that refute the idea of a homogeneous and continuous art development in the sense of positive progress."[10] One could say that this formulation borrows from and updates to the art context the progress-critical and mystical position Walter Benjamin elaborated in Theses on the Philosophy of History.[11] What Benjamin criticizes as the "concept of progression through a homogenous empty time," ideologically bound with "the concept of historical progress" is, in Dziewior's formulation, radicalized, more threateningly, into homogenous "art development" (the threat is rhetorically underscored by the logical perplexity it leaves the reader in: just what is a homogenous development supposed to be?). Although Sehgal has expressed sympathy with the idea of technical progress, his work here subtly reminds visitors that the march of time brings age after infancy and youth, that first you go upstairs in the Kunstverein but then you go downstairs, thereby suggesting (but is this reading too much into the artist's intentions?) that this idea of cultural (or political) progress is perhaps at odds with our material, bodily, interests. His choice of leaving the entire Kunstverein space empty, as an echo of Benjamin's "homogenous empty time" problematization of progress, should not be overlooked, either. Sehgal also brings an attitude which is appropriate to the Kunstverein not only in this holiday season, but at this moment in its over-150-year history. With all due respects to the market ("I wouldn't be sitting here today if I hadn't managed to create a link between something you could call 'immaterial' and the market"), Sehgal lays the main stress of his work elsewhere: "To me, art is a celebration, it celebrates people's abilities to alter nature, manufacture things, and to derive a subject-construction from that. [...] it's about the experience and the celebration of abundance. To go on to joy in an affirmative way is something that interests me a lot in my work. To link responsible production with joy, something that isn't ascetic, not protestant."[12] We all know that the Kunstverein in Hamburg has had some turmoil since September, 2005. Conflicts involving the board elections, an invalidated election,[13] the ethical imbroglio of Dziewior's moonlighting for the Artist Pension Trust which resulted in his resignation from said organization,[14] bad publicity, a failed attempt to change the Kunstverein's charter. Sehgal's joyful approach has affinities to Dickens that go beyond subtle references. The art-historian Arnold Hauser has described Dickens' "Gospel of Love" as "an adulterated, sugary Philosophy of Christmas," adding: "Dickens is a peace-loving citizen, who accepts the presuppositions of the prevailing capitalistic system without question."[15] Although it's still early in his career, Sehgal seems well poised to actualize this project. What more could one wish for in an Art Center that needs order and stability? If "peace-loving" and "accepting" are not yet normal dispositions in the art-world, they certainly should be. As TV journalist Markus Peichl aptly put it, while trying to defend attempts by himself and other members of the board to restrict Kunstverein-member voting rights: "the main point, in my opinion, is that we would especially like to have people, also at the general assemblies, who are here because they are interested in art, because they are constantly interested in art, and so are here for that reason and aren't coming to voice their opinions and vote; and that should also be the goal."[16]

Radical rhetoric and commodity nexuses

Why the bother? Isn't this embarrassing, even for him? A simple answer is that the market needs it (what it is, I'll elaborate below). With recent critical heckling about the proliferation of art fairs, 'commercialization', the triumph of 'Flachware' (flatware) and the 'rematerialization of art', one can understand the desire to reestablish credibility.[30] A special insert to Swiss rag Parkett (the Pravda of the art-market) was titled (IM)MATERIAL? in 2004. In it, Nicolas Bourriaud corrals Rikrit Tiravanija, Vanessa Beecroft, and Maurizio Cattelan under his "Seven notes on the immaterial" (he had apparently not yet heard of Sehgal). In the recent past, magazines like Parkett and Art Centers like Bourriaud's Palais de Tokyo have shown inexhaustible resourcefulness at pasting radical-sounding discourse on commodities and commodity-facilitators: Concept, No Concept, Hardcore, Collective Creativity, Punk, Straight Edge, Zwischen Jesus und Junkie, Mono Dope, kpD, Mai 98, RAF, Partisanen der Utopie, Rebel Art, Never Work, Für die Konstruktion des Unmöglichen, Reality Hackers, Immaterial.[31] When I sat at the podium at the HfbK early this year I experienced firsthand how Sehgal's hot air was worth every penny to Jürgen Vorrath as he was under fire for his "artists are entrepreneurs" thesis. It gave him and his toupee a chance to marshall something really radical: politics + immateriality (but still income-generating!). For two minutes, he preached the gospel of Sehgal to all "hobby-artists."[32] Hyperbolic claims of little substance are nothing new in art. The business-as-usual of the market maintains a semblance of autonomy in an environment which owes its existence to autonomy's factual curtailment.[33] Hyperbole is awarded to the compliant as a consolation prize. Ian Burn made the following assessment in 1975: "Today it is surely beyond any doubt that this popular idea of a 'permanent revolution' [...] is a set of empty gestures which threaten none of the market requirements and end up being a sheer celebration of the new individuality, arrogantly and, finally, stupidly set against the idea of sociality."[34] The sixties and seventies context Burn refers to, however, still saw the market concentrating its docile vanguardians into successive "movements" and slogans (Pop, Op Art, Minimalism, When Attitudes Become Form), each endowed with a life cycle of around five years. The public-sphere identification and promotion of these movements, being dependent on the mass media, was thereby adapted to the general nature of programming at that time. But this was all changing, according to an influential and far-sighted study by Oskart Negt and Alexander Kluge.[35] The rise of the 'consciousness industry' and of the 'new public spheres of production' were in the process of radically altering work, leisure, communications, and political perspectives. Over thirty years later, we are still living this process. Advanced capitalism brings with it changes in the internal structure of the commodity, which appears in "a specific and coherent accumulation, which constitutes a new use-value and a new body of commodities."[36] The consciousness industry implements a project: "Society must not just be turned into an immense collection of commodities in objective economic terms, but also in a way that can be concretely perceived by the individual. [...] The commodity becomes, as a sensual-suprasensual thing, a means of transforming articles of use into fantasy products, which do not merely function as the object of consumption but indicate a worldview as well." As a result, "commodity nexuses" can produce an ideological benefit to their producers without being individually purchased as packaged, material, commodities. Their role in social reality, their hidden use-value, goes far beyond the cash register, as they are instrumental in the reorganization of production, the privatization of public space, a culture of 'immediacy', and 'inwardly directed imperialism'.[37] The "commodity nexuses" are syncretistic, mixing education, entertainment, communication, and information in a way that promotes certain experiences and blocks others. Translating this into the terms developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, these nexuses foster and promote "schemes of perception" which are at the basis of mobilization and (the main concern of Kluge and Negt) the demobilization of groups.[38] In the art-world, and for cultural production generally, this has meant a derealizing, post-modernist 'anything goes'. If Ian Burn's account may sound a little dated in 2006, it is because the 'permanent revolution' he mentions has been supplanted by a permanent party (Sehgal's "celebration of abundance"). The imperative of safeguarding "market requirements" is the same as in 1972, however. The supplanting of grandiose 'movements' (they also make such easy targets for uncouth critics) by the principle of eclecticism and simulated openness can very well be masqueraded as a cultural shift implying the "refutation" of "positive progress"—it is, in fact, part and parcel of the real positive results the capitalist class has had in maintaining its domination in the West, making ever more progress with regard to returns on investment and diminishing tax burdens. The art world can very well have a run with immateriality, just as it will invite Florian Schneider or Bureau d'Études to do the "activist" routine, show Mathieu Laurette's old money-back work for a dash of subversion, contract Bernadette Corporation to do away with 'authorship', ask Isabelle Graw and Chantal Mouffe to update Marx, then invite some crazy-collective-you' ve-never-heard-of to make some mess in the corner. All the while, we'll get a steady stream of flavors-of-the-month providing us with their 'personal visions' in collectible formats, those most endearing among them being promoted from private to the rank of "major" artist. Bourdieu diagnosed a similar period of cultural restoration, in which, following social crises, "political regimes in quest of legitimacy aim[ed] to recreate a consensus around a 'fair middle' eclectic culture": this was the period of academic painting in mid-nineteenth century France.[39] What, at the most elementary level, are the "commodity complexes" Tino Sehgal belongs to? We have two, the gallery Johnen + Schöttle (Cologne) complex and the gallery Jan Mot (Brussels) complex. Johnen + Schöttle combines Sehgal with an array of object producers. There are even 6 painters who benefit from the extra mention that they use oils (one is an ex-punk and he paints Dee Dee Ramone icons for good measure). Breakdown: 15 painters, 7 photographers, 5 sculptors, 2 sculptor/painters, 1 video artist, one '60s concept-artist survivor (Dan Graham), and one immaterial artist. That makes 3% immaterial. And lots of latter-day surrealism. We have 26 male artists to choose from, Candida Höfer being the lone woman in the crowd.Jan Mot is far more advanced, in that he doesn't even have one oil painter. He also has two '60s concept-artist survivors (David Lamelas, who has converted to video, and Ian Wilson, who is selling povera sculpture-installations). He also sells works by other vaguely 'post-conceptual' artists like Liam Gillick, who are not on the gallery roster. Breakdown: 5 photographers, 3 video-artists, 3 video-installation artists, 3 concept artists (one ½ immaterial), 1 object artist (writes name with a ∂!), and one full-time no-photo immaterial artist. No collectives, just solo-acts. 5 of 15 artists are women. That makes between 9 and 18% immaterial, with production ordered along an ironic <---->(auto)biographical polarity, the gallerist making much, in a published interview, of the literary orientation of one young conceptual artist who does work similar to Robert Barry's in blithe, gallery-approved, ignorance of the historical record. How does an artist with such a minority stance generate such hype? Or, to put it differently, if what he's doing is so good, why not galleries that are 100% immaterial? Is Sehgal a loss leader (a product or service sold at a substantial discount in order to generate additional sales)? Or is his position so insubstantial, so dependent on novelty effect, that if there were more than one 'new immaterialist' it would just spoil the show?[40] Before we go on, a summary. The ingredients to Sehgal's "products" are: audience-participation theater + Brouwn "no pictures" policy (but sans "no interviews" policy) + Vanessa Beecroft/Thomas Hirschorn mobilization of many laypeople payed some shit fee + oral sales contract + instructions only the owner sees + "immaterial" rhetoric. In a 1969 interview later published in her essential historic survey Six years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972, Lucy Lippard offered the following perspective on then-ongoing debates: "The artists who are trying to do non-object art are introducing a drastic solution to the problem of artists being bought and sold so easily, along with their art." The developments of that time, taking the lead from fluxus member Henry Flynt, were a response to the "gallery-money-power structure."[41] The period saw the manifold approaches of idea-, concept-, mail-, earth-, and process-art (also Metzger's auto-destructive-art), independent distribution networks, discussion groups, publications, audio recordings, public interventions (unauthorized, and at times in museums, cf: Guerilla Art Action Group), as well as countless evanescent projects which produced nothing close to what was then accepted as an "art form." Contrary to the image presented by all recent surveys that I know, contestation of norms and power structures became even stronger after 1972, with the publication of the Ian Burn/MelRamsden-edited the Fox and the emergence of groups like the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and Artists' Meeting for Cultural Change. Victor Burgin's 1984 assessment makes clear how effective these protagonists were in hitting a nerve and being identified as a threat, despite the many other challenges to the status quo at the time: "The conceptual art of the late 1960s to early 1970s was an affront to the established values, hostility to the newer work being often so intense as to suggest that more than merely aesthetic values were at stake."[42] As on the political front, the conservative backlash was impending. The firing of Artforum editor John Coplans in 1976 set the pace—a result of protests and pressure from galleries (Warhol-gallerist Leo Castelli being especially energetic) and red-baiting diatribes by New York Times art critic and future Reagan administration functionary Hilton Kramer.[43] Against this backdrop, a younger generation of artists obliged when it came to "being bought," developing creative rationales (this was the '80s, after all) like (and often aided by) their colleagues working in the realm of academic "theory."[44] The Stedelijk public affairs department is 180 degrees off the mark when the museum website flatly states that "Sehgal wishes to take the dematerialisation (sic) of the art project, as conceptual art believed in it (sic), still a step further." Tino Sehgal is working against what Lippard and most of the projects falling under the category of dematerialization stood for. He may be discursively and formally mimicking some aspects of their practice, but the alpha and omega of his project is to integrate himself into the state-of-affairs they were trying to undermine.[45] In turn, by occupying the radical high ground discursively (and with the complicity of the bourgeois media like die Zeit), he, Dziewior, and his galleries are producing new kinds of exclusivity and undermining strategies which may arise in opposition to the art market's integrative ambitions. Sehgal's 'immaterialism' is the antithesis of dematerialization. The historical impetus of the latter was an aversion to and a critique of commodities against a backdrop of capitalism-driven wars; the former is based on an infatuation with 'new' commodities, against a similar backdrop of capitalism-driven wars.

Networks to the New Pastoral and back again

What, if any, is the sociopolitical orientation crystallized in Sehgal's work? During my visit, my "interlocutors" accosted me with forthright questions and statements you would not usually experience when first meeting strangers. "What do you think progress means?...what about all this money?...at my age one tries to find moments in which one can experience a little peace..." While talking with my last partner about his grandchildren ("they have no time, always shuttling from one activity or birthday to the next"), the theme of networking came up, it seemingly being a near-existential imperative, at an earlier and earlier age. On my way "out" of the exhibition, having completed the itinerary, I allowed myself to ask a few more direct questions: "If you are not professional actors, how were you selected? Were there 'wanted' ads?" My partner answered, "Oh, friends of friends..." and, after a moment's pause and with wry fatalism: "... I guess you would say, networks." This is, after all, the Art Center in which the first curated show by the current director carried the title Zusammenhänge herstellen. After a couple years, there is much to be said that the English translation of the title for the catalogue (contextualize) was the wrong one, the other meaning, making connections, being far more on the mark. In a 2004 essay, I drew on the study and findings of the sociologists Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello in order to examine how a set of values they label connectionist structures the commonplaces of much recent art criticism and curation, putting it in phase with the new imperatives of Network Capitalism.[46] Since then, networks and capitalism have thrived at the Kunstverein. Director Yilmaz Dziewior began working for the Artist Pension Trust as a "Curatorial Committee Member".[47] A supposed "barter based" retirement plan launched in 2004, it lets 'promising' artists offer artworks instead of paying premiums. A collection is built up, and, following the 'rising tide' adage, all trust "team"-members, including non-artist investors in the fund, have a direct financial benefit from the success of any and all other partners. And indeed, APT promises to "support the careers of participating artists." APT puts the artist into "powerful company," in the words of Michael Lingner. "What is at first a hardly-negligible social benefit for the embedded artist who has been rendered 'untouchable' is, from an economic and purely factual point of view, nothing other than the attempt to set up a cartel that aims for full market control and the ability to dictate prices."[48] Many questions arise. Advisors, be they curators of institutions receiving public funding, have a very real power to increase the market value of artists on the 'team'. They are even paid a fee based on a percentage of the sales-income of the artists they have recruited. When and how can it be established that a public or semi-public arts administrator is putting public function behind private financial benefit? The matter would be settled if the curator refrained from exhibiting APT artists, staying clear of potential conflicts of interest. Dziewior has, however, exhibited 15 APT teammates since the fund was launched in 2004, his (in)famous Formalismus. Moderne Kunst, heute exhibition counting 7 of 25 artists in the trust.[49] Apparently under pressure from the board, Dziewior resigned from the trust this past Fall, but questions about the program Hamburg has been treated to under his mantle remain. What a relief that Tino Sehgal isn't in the APT (although both of his Jochen + Schöttle gallery-mates who are in the APT have also been exhibited by Dziewior)! The praxis of his income-generation-without-material-dependency approach is definitely in tune with the Kunstverein network, all the same. The website of the Berlin Biennale touts Sehgal for having "continually provoked viewers [...] ever since his first work was shown in a visual art context at Manifesta 4."[50] The Manifesta is certainly a prestigious location to show your "first work" but checking the S section of the Manifesta 4 catalogue may leave you puzzled: Schabus...Serapionov. Where is Sehgal? Answer: riding Maurizio Cattelan-sidekick Jens Hoffman's coattails. Hoffman pulled then-unknown Sehgal onboard, with the Sehgal project far-more-modestly described as a "juxtaposition of dance and visual art" and as "choreography."[51] Don't you know?—Jens Hoffman was just at the Kunstverein last April as guest curator, in fact. He was exhibiting winners of the Neue Kunst in Hamburg annual 'travel stipend' which he, as juror, had selected. Two of the five winners were APT artists, interestingly. Lucky for Dziewior, he hadn't 'curated' the show, so there was an alibi if ethical charges came up—Lingner's article was starting to make rounds, being republished in several major German dailies. It was all sheer coincidence that Dziewior had had the idea of exhibiting the Neue Kunst in Hamburg stipend-winners in the Kunstverein, for the first time ever, in this fortuitous year that APT fared so well. But ho ho ho, that's all old hat! The holiday season is a time for sharing, introspection, and the enjoyment of art. We know that Christmas has generated a form of evanescent church-art, the pastoral tableau of the nativity, a 'constructed situation', in a way, with members of the congregation playing the roles of Mary, Joseph, the Wise-men. In a study presented in 2002, Amar Lakel and Tristan Trémeau argue that a pastoral turn is taking place within contemporary art itself, in particular in the work of so called 'esthetique relationelle' artists championed by Nicolas Bourriaud. This study has only appeared in French, so I would like to close this review by quoting some passages I have translated: "At its origins, the pastoral is an artistic genre which exalted the virtues of rustic life, with the figure of the shepherd, the poor wretch, the idiot, or the deceived lover, the country decor supposedly being close to 'communal life' and the state-of-nature. This art had resounding success in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at the time that state-of-nature philosophies were being developed (Locke, Rousseau...). This art was principally addressed to aristocrats and bourgeois bent on recovering the 'true values' they had forgotten. These models have now migrated to the figure of the marginal or homeless person, or the immigrant, those through which the will to demonstrate an original community of all men can best achieve its means, thereby reenacting and exhibiting it. As Julian Stallabrass has shown in 1999, in his book that deconstructed the pastoral ideology of Young British Artists (Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Mark Wallinger, Sarah Lucas...), this esthetic is a class position, not only profoundly bourgeois, but reactionary in nature: against an elitist art that is distant from the community of men, let us reevaluate the common and the banal, because it guarantees more authenticity and sincerity, it is supposedly more natural. Going further, we would like to demonstrate that pastoral art has recently developed within forms of dispositifs which go beyond this naiveté-themed genre, consolidating it into a real ideological technique. [...] Do not misunderstand us, our point is not to show that sacred catholic art is having a comeback, but rather: that which has always structured catholicism in its pastoral missions also underpins current artistic practices and contemporary exhibitions that lay claim to notions of exchange, mediation, and pacts. [...] The human inhabitants of the little planetary village are called on to communicate in these living pastoral tableaux confectioned by Rirkrit Tiravanija or Jorge Pardo, that spectators can then complete with their own presence. At any rate, someone is waiting for them, the work is available. No Mystery is revealed, they simply have to repeat daily gestures (cook, play, eat, speak, buy, negotiate...), these gestures that are common to us all in their banal universality. [...] In this context, the work of art is conceived like a communication technology, a medium in the poorest sense of the word—a means—, which is capable of linking up souls that have lost their way in the mazes of thought. Like the shepherd's staff, it is the power dispositif which is assigned the task of linking mankind together. A Church of Information and Communication Technologies, it takes hold of the pragmatics of language, theatralizes the power relations which are imminent in communication, in order to create a new dogma of restorative alliance of the universal community. [...] This ideal of communicational politics makes itself immune against any specificity brought on by a critical position. Taking itself as an object, this ideology guarantees us of the coming of a new communicational self, connected to the free market of network thinking. [...] Accepting this game is accepting the pastoral procedure which binds development of a subjectivity to self-effacement in the norm, self-fulfillment to exhibition to others, the field of possibilities to free market exchange."[52]

January 7, 2007, 5.30 pm: The Kunstverein Working Group visits the Tino Sehgal show.